[fod] Festival of Doubt: 13/5, 12pm

[Marcus Gallagher <marcusg@itee.uq.edu.au>]

Festival of Doubt
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http://festivalofdoubt.uq.edu.au

Date: Monday, 13th May
Time: 12-2pm (bring your lunch!)
Venue: Gp South Bldg (78), Rm 344

Speaker: Alex Pudmenzky

Teleonomic Creativity: An Etiological Analysis

When the human mind searches concept space for solutions to a given 
condition we have a choice between conventional and creative 
thinking. But what are the probabilities of improving a given 
situation using creative thinking compared with conventional 
thinking? To answer this question we are extending the meaning of 
creativity beyond human creativity. We view creativity as an 
optimised search strategy applicable to the larger set of all 
teleonomic systems and term this creativity "Teleonomic Creativity". 
We argue that an analog process is common to all manifestations of 
creativity within teleonomic systems and describe this process and 
its cause. In order to demonstrate this process and to make 
quantitative comparisons, we utilise the metaphor of an adaptive 
fitness landscape and simple statistical techniques. The term fitness 
in our case describes the condition of a well-defined property being 
suitable for a purpose, rather than an overall evaluation of many 
complex interactions measuring reproductive success. We define 
creativity as the successful attempt of either individuals or 
populations to gain higher fitness via exploration of global fitness 
peaks as opposed to the exploitation of a currently occupied local 
peak. We then show mathematically how the inclusion of creativity in 
a search can dramatically increase the chances of finding appropriate 
solutions. We also recognise that creative behaviour is most 
successful when the environment is unstable. We note the existence of 
a strategic meta-parameter that allows self-adaptation when tuned via 
a feedback loop from the environment. We show that creativity can be 
understood as a random process with an optimal setting for the 
standard deviation that maximises the probability of hitting a target 
of higher fitness. We show how Carnap entropy can can be used to 
recognise teleonomic creativity. We support our claims with computer 
simulations and observe several occurrences of teleonomic creativity 
in nature. 

Our investigations also enable us to rationalise the processes, 
conditions and phenomena surrounding human creativity such as 
mistakes, madness, serendipity, humor, analogy making and creativity 
promoters and inhibitors. Our findings may also allow us to 
incorporate creativity into artificial computer models.

We speculate that creativity is an emerging property of any 
teleonomic system and as such ubiquitous in nature.


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marcusg@itee.uq.edu.au http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~marcusg/